Murder of the Kraemer family

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Grave site of the Kraemer family in the main cemetery in Braunschweig

The murder of the Kraemer family was a criminal case that occurred on January 19, 1977 in Mascherode , a district of Braunschweig . Ferenc Sós [ ˈfɛrɛnts ˈʃoːʃ ], who was identified as a suspected perpetrator after just a few days , took Wolfgang Kraemer, a director of the local Volksbank , as well as his wife and three of their four children hostage in order to extort a ransom . After the money was handed over, however , he murdered all five people. The couple's eldest daughter was not in the house at the time of the crime and was the only one to survive.

Sós was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1978 in a circumstantial trial. It was the first case in Germany since 1945 in which an enrichment perpetrator killed five people.

Reconstructed sequence of events

Since the afternoon or evening of January 19, 1977, Wolfgang Kraemer, his wife Brigitte and their children Stefan, Nele and Martin were detained and threatened by Ferenc Sós in their single-family home in Mascherode in order to extort a ransom.

After a reconstruction , the crime was as follows:

January 19th

Martin, the youngest son, was last seen that day around 2:30 p.m. playing together with his sister Nele, who went home around 6:30 p.m. after visiting a friend. Stefan was last seen driving his moped around 4:30 p.m. A witness stated that Stefan wanted to meet him, but did not keep the appointment. At around 5:10 p.m., he asked Brigitte Kraemer about Stefan. Although the moped was in the garage, Mrs. Kraemer stated that Stefan was not at home. This was also Brigitte Kraemer's last sighting, who had previously driven home in a red VW Beetle around 4 p.m. Wolfgang Kraemer returned from his work at Volksbank around 6:30 p.m. Shortly before 9 p.m. Kraemer called Kurt R., an authorized signatory of the Volksbank, and informed him that his family had been kidnapped and that he was being threatened with firearms by several men, who received a ransom of between DM 700,000 and DM 1,000,000 demanded. This amount could not be obtained because no such amount was available in the bank vault. After Kraemer's negotiations with the perpetrator (s), a sum of 165,000 DM was agreed. Around 10:30 p.m., the money was handed over to Wolfgang Kraemer at the front door of the family home. At Kraemer's insistence, however, the general manager did not notify the police until the next morning .

Witnesses later said they heard two cars pulling away from the house that evening. Brigitte Kraemer's vehicle was later found at the main train station .

January 20th

The next morning the chief clerk worried his superiors and they finally notified the police. When this arrived at the scene, it was not yet clear whether the perpetrators were still here. So the senior officer went into the building through a cellar window. There he first found Wolfgang Kraemer, who was tied up and strangled with a cord. On the ground floor, he discovered the other family members, who had also been strangled, in different rooms. The alleged perpetrators left only a few traces; this included a document demanding the release of members of the Baader-Meinhof group , which was apparently intended to draw attention to the terrorist organization, the Red Army Faction , which was active at the time . However, a left-wing terrorist background could soon be ruled out and the document identified as the wrong track.

When the late news reports of the hostage-taking and the fivefold murder in Braunschweig, a former fellow inmate of Sós, Waldemar S., reported to the security personnel with the message that he knew who had done this, thereby giving the decisive clue about Ferenc SOS.

Investigations

After the crime, the responsible criminal police of the Braunschweig Police Department formed a special commission , which at times consisted of up to 70 investigators. When asked about similar acts to the police information system POLAS , the computer named the Hungarian refugee Ferenc Sós, who had tied up and locked six people in Borgholzhausen as early as 1970 . On December 23, 1976, Sós was released from prison in Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel . He had already spent twelve of the 20 years in Germany in prison mainly for break-ins.

Four days after the crime, Ferenc Sós was arrested in Hamburg. Pretrial detention was ordered. The arrested person denied involvement in the crime. The investigation led to the indictment on the basis of evidence against Sós . Another inmate from Sós, Klaus-Heinz P., was also arrested but released. This burdened Sós heavily, but was perceived by the media as a possible accomplice.

Reporting and reactions

The reporters of the various daily and tabloid newspapers traveled from all over Germany to report exclusively on this crime. A real media tourism developed . The headlines read, for example: Image : A villa full of dead ; Hamburger Abendblatt : horror at fivefold murder ; or the mirror : stupid, primitive and bumbling? .

After the act, the city director of Braunschweig, Hans-Günther Weber, and many of the citizens of Braunschweig called for the reinstatement of the death penalty for murders.

Several people were harassed and intimidated by sensation seekers and journalists in order to gain information about the murder; For example, several people had made it to the boardroom of the Volksbank using physical force. Furthermore, photos of the Kraemer family were obtained through unethical means. In some cases, false information was also given about the victims, for example Wolfgang Kraemer was falsely clichéd as a tennis player. For the funeral, too, members of the rainbow press tried to obtain details about the funeral location using false information. For similar reasons, two lawyers even had to give up the mandate for Sós.

Criminal trial

The criminal trial began a year later on February 2, 1978 before the jury chamber of the Braunschweig regional court ; The presiding judge was Manfred Flotho . The surviving daughter appeared as a joint plaintiff , represented by her lawyer Lehmann . The public prosecutor's office was represented by Karl-Heinz Reinhardt. The defendant Ferenc Sós was defended by the Hamburg defense lawyers Leonore Gottschalk-Solger, Peter Gottschalk and Reinhard Daum.

The court summoned 131 witnesses and 19 experts for the trial. In addition to 27 volumes with a total of 6,750 pages of process files, 41 files with traces were also used for the process. In the circumstantial trial, the defense put forward arguments against the witness Klaus-Heinz P., who lived in a shared apartment with Sós, as well as against the circumstantial evidence presented by the public prosecutor.

In addition to the evidence, Sós' behavior also pointed to him as the perpetrator. According to a former inmate, on January 17, 1977, he tried to persuade him to take hostages with blackmail in order to obtain money. In addition, the two apartments of celebrities in Hamburg had observed.

On May 12, 1978 Ferenc Sós was sentenced to life imprisonment for five counts of murder, blackmail and extortionate kidnapping . In addition, Sós was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment for a break-in and attempted manslaughter on November 26, 1970 in Hamburg, where he had targeted an unexpected witness. In its first instance judgment, the criminal chamber at the Braunschweig Regional Court did not rule out the possibility that another offender was involved in the act. However, since only 8,000 DM were missing from the booty, the criminal chamber was convinced that only he could be considered as the main culprit. After the verdict, several journalists questioned the perpetration of Sós. The defense appealed on appeal , which was rejected on March 23, 1979 by the 5th criminal division of the Federal Court of Justice in West Berlin .

Sós died in mid-August 2011 at the age of 77 in prison in Celle prison .

The following clues were raised in the press.
indication meaning place Time of discovery (by witnesses or police)
Address of Sós Sós denied having stayed in Braunschweig Written down for a student from Sós on the return journey by train from Braunschweig to Hamburg January 20, 1977: The night of the crime, after the crime
Reval cigarette butts According to saliva sample : blood group corresponds to blood group of Sós Found at the scene January 20, 1977, morning
alleged RAF letter Similar document was seen by a witness months before the crime at Sós
VW Beetle Mrs. Kraemer's car, probably used as an escape vehicle Braunschweig main station
Receipts Two metal cassettes were bought by a man shortly after 9:30 a.m. the morning after the crime in Hamburg. Kaufhof, Hamburg shortly after 9:30 a.m. on January 20, 1977
Pack of cigarettes and cigarettes Reval same mark as at the scene Arrest of Sós January 23, 1977?
Cloth gloves unknown
Addresses
String Same texture as the string used for the strangulation House search in Sós or arrest of Sós, apartment Sós and P. January 23 (?) Or February 4, 1977
Banderoles Banderoles of the Volksbank Braunschweig, charred (in the paper basket) House search of apartment Sós and P. 4th February 1977
Metal cassette 1 With Kaufhof sticker. Contents: 16,500 DM
Metal cassette 2 Found on departure with witness P. who wanted to have driven the routes with Sós. Contents: DM 139,000, serial numbers partially registered with Volksbank Braunschweig at the Horn motorway junction February 4, 1977?

literature

  • Uwe Day: murder out of greed. In: Kathrin Pagendarm, Eckhardt Reimann: On the trail of crime. The most spectacular criminal cases in Lower Saxony. Schlütersche, Hannover 2006, ISBN 3-899-93717-1 . ( online )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Uwe Day: Murder out of greed. Pp. 59-68.
  2. ↑ a b Gerhard Mauz : Not really, but I am satisfied. - Der Spiegel, print edition of February 20, 1978. Accessed online on August 14, 2011.
  3. ↑ a b c d Joachim Holtz: The thread became a rope for him . Die Zeit, May 6, 1977. Accessed online on August 14, 2011.
  4. ↑ a b Thomas Parr: When Ferenc Sos had the ransom, he killed the family in cold blood. - Braunschweiger Zeitung from February 1, 2008.
  5. ↑ a b c d Der Spiegel: Between probability and certainty. Print edition, May 22, 1978. Accessed online on August 14, 2011.
  6. ↑ Horror over fivefold murder  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on Abendblatt.de@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.abendblatt.de  
  7. ↑ Stupid, primitive and bumbling? on spiegel.de
  8. ↑ Kraemer murder case: Trial began 40 years ago at ndr.de on February 2, 2018
  9. ^ Rhein-Zeitung: Ransom demanded - kidnapping victims dead. ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 14, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.rhein-zeitung.de
  10. ↑ Der Spiegel: Judgment: Ferenc Sos. Print edition, March 26, 1979. Accessed online on August 14, 2011.
  11. ↑ The five-time murderer Ferenc Sos died at the age of 77 after 34 years in prison in Celle. Corresponding information from our newspaper was confirmed yesterday by the Braunschweig public prosecutor's office. In 1977, this is how a family of five bankers from Mascherode was strangled. News from the Braunschweiger Zeitung from August 17, 2011.
  12. ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt: Fivefold Murder: But S. is silent.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Print edition of January 28, 1978. Accessed online on August 14, 2011.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / suche.abendblatt.de  
  13. ↑ The police reconstructed that there were three travel options from Braunschweig to Hamburg that night. The direct train would have arrived in Hamburg at 9:29 a.m.
  14. ↑ Standing time determined by snow depth. It had snowed from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. that night.